Chapter 57:

  After eating some of the food the boy had brought, Nereida sang to the water, pulling fresh water from the ocean, leaving behind the salt in the sand. She sang the water in the bowls.

  “Here,” she handed it to Ael.

  “Love… I can’t drink sea water.”

  “It’s fresh now. I can leave the sand, the salt, bits of dead fish, and anything else behind.” She smiled, taking a sip. Ael watched her, only taking a sip after making sure that Nereida was not ill.

  “Does that mean you could pull the water from a person’s body?” Ael asked, her mind clearly in a very dark pce. Nereida choked on the water she was sipping.

  “I suppose, if the need was dire. But that seems… worse, somehow, then just stabbing them with ice.” She took another sip, trying not to look at Ael. After a moment, when Ael did not follow up her macabre thought, Nereida tried to redirect her. “There’s a canvas for a lean-too at the bottom of the bag. We should get it set up at the tree line… so we can watch for them. And then we should tie our supplies up high.”

  “Why?”

  “So scavengers can’t get it.” Nereida frowned,chewing her lip. “Have you never had to keep your supplies safe?”

  “My supplies are kept on a very safe ship, where the only scavengers are rats, and that’s why Dymion raises cats.” Ael shrugged. “And if we made ndfall, we took shifts keeping things safe.”

  “Well, I’m not taking shifts. I want to actually talk to you while we are in exile together.”

  Ael stared at her, worry in her features.

  “Love, this isn’t exile. It is temporary. Your people are helping us.” She brought her hand up to Nereida’s cheek, a soft, simple touch. Nereida felt tears stinging her eyes, but she banished them with the strength she finally had after eating.

  “Can we trust them?” Her words came out bitter, with all the pent up frustration she had been attempting to hide.

  “We can trust some of them. I… the old woman was sincere in her desire to help. I am sure.” Nereida nodded. She wanted to ask Ael how she was sure, but did not want to bring the conversation back to magic. She saw the way Ael put up walls when her own magic was brought up, how she rebelled against even the thought she might be magical. What a terrible way to live, denying a part of you.

  They sat in companionable silence, the ocean’s song and the buzzing of bugs noise enough for them both. The wind had changed, bringing a cooler breeze to what had been a very warm morning. Weather out here would be unpredictable at best. The trees rustled in the wind, adding their song to the ocean’s. Nereida looked over at Ael, who was cleaning the sand off her feet by rubbing them gently. They were covered in scratches.

  “Will you let me help you?” Nereida asked, motioning to Ael’s feet. “I don’t want your wounds to get infected.”

  “Can you?”

  “Easily. We are by the ocean. Everything is easier here.” She hummed a soft, lilting tune, calling to the water in the air, in Ael and in the ocean to help her heal. The water pulled from the air washed over Ael’s feet, leaving her clean and her wounds, minor as they were, washed away.

  “I miss my boots,” Ael grumped. Nereida smiled softly. She scooped up handfuls of sand and dumped them on Ael’s toes.

  “You can’t feel that with boots on. The sand, the earth. Stand up and dig your toes in. Remember what it was like to py by the beach and build castles!” But instead of smiling, Ael scowled.

  “I wasn’t allowed. The ocean is not tame, and pying beside her, in her, was not acceptable to my parents, to my family.”

  “You’ve never built castles in the sand?” Nereida asked, feeling a fleeting wish to do violence to Ael’s entire extended line. Had her beloved ever been allowed to be a child? Even her father had encouraged py. Ael shook her head no.

  Nereida wrapped the egg in the bnkets, and then took her wife’s hand, dragging her to her feet.

  “What are you doing?” Ael asked indignantly as Nereida pulled off the Admiral’s jacket and her own over dress.

  “We,” she stressed the word, her tone challenging, “are going to build sandcastles.”

  “Are you moon-touched?”

  “No,” Nereida replied. “But you need to rex. And so we are going to py.” She half-dragged her wife to the water’s edge, where the sand was dark and cool. Ael made a grumbling half-protest when Nereida pulled her down into the wet sand.

  “It’s cold,” she grumped. But Nereida ughed. She picked up a glob of wet sand, pressing it into a vaguely round shape.

  “Try, love,” she encouraged. “Find seashells and decorate what you build. Let loose.” Ael scowled.

  “I have dignity.”

  “So do I. This has nothing to do with dignity.” Nereida kissed Ael’s cheek softly. “This has to do with healing.” Ael scowled at her, clearly not understanding, but she finally relented, and used her hands to dig in the sand, making a sad little bump.

  “There.”

  “Oh, is that the extent of your creativity?” Nereida challenged, pushing her love gently with her shoulder. Ael growled something about “impossible witches” but she started again.

  They pyed in the sand like children for almost an hour, and by the end, Ael had a sweet little smile on her face, wistful and warm. She had made a little sandcastle and pced pebbles around it. She looked almost proud of her creation, but more importantly, she finally, finally looked rexed.

  “There’s your smile,” Nereida whispered to her, kissing her cheek chastely. “If we have to be here for weeks, love, it can’t all be dour.” She kissed Ael’s ear, “nor can it all be love-making… though if you wanted, we could. Here, in the waves… alone….”

  “Oh I draw the line at that,” Ael replied. “There are pces that I do NOT wish to get sand.” Nereida giggled.

  “Perhaps once we have something set up as a shelter?” she suggested.

  “Oh you are incorrigible!” Ael’s tone was fond. “Let’s see what we can cobble together. A fire too. You should collect rge stones so we can keep the egg warm at night. I don’t fancy cuddling it to sleep.”

  They set about the hard task of making a camp. Nereida wandered the edge of the beach, searching for rocks enough to line their fire pit and still warm the egg. The ftter rocks she used to make the fire pit, the rounder ones she set aside to pce in the fire ter. She collected dead sticks, collecting leaves from st season to act as tinder for their fire. She hoped none of the leaves had dangerous smoke, but there was no way to tell for certain. She knew none of these pnts. Herbology had not been a topic the tutors had taught her. Who expected the princess to need to survive in the wilds?

  Ael, meanwhile, was attaching the piece of the canvas to two trees, making a little shelter for them. She had woven living trees together, tying them with vines, and then had pced the canvas across the trees before she began to tie the canvas down. Sweat poured down her face as she fought with a particurly stubborn tree. Nereida stopped seeking stones to call forth more water from the ocean, filling the bowls.

  “Drink,” she ordered. Ael’s eyebrow rose in surprise.

  “Oh, are you the one giving orders now, Princess?” she teased. Nereida smiled mischievously.

  “Maybe ter,” she said with a shrug of feigned indifference. “But for now, drink the water so you don’t get sick. You want to have energy ter don’t you?”

  “Oh, wife of mine, I always have energy for you.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Nereida said with a grin, before she skipped off to find another stone.

  Starting a fire turned out to be a bigger issue than anticipated. Neither of them had any flint, nor any experience using twigs and moss. By the time they figured it out, the sun was already going down, and their tempers were frayed. The fire helped, a familiar thing in their unfamiliar isnd, but both of them were frustrated with the other, with their isotion and with themselves. Dinner was some kind of crispy, dried out seaweed and smoked fish. It was salty, and chewy. Nereida found herself missing the dried bean soups. At least it had tasted of something other than salt, and did not hurt her jaw to chew it.

  They took turns talking about their lives when they were young. Nereida told Ael stories of Ango and Leevan, finally using her brother’s names now that she no longer had secrets to keep from her wife. Ael told her of sweet times with some of the servant children, and with her cousins. The Queen was older than Ael by some seven or eight years, so they were not friends, but neither were they rivals.

  The fire burned low, and the moon was high in the sky before they began to settle for bed. They pced the egg in a nest of warmed rocks, with one of the cloaks wrapped around it to keep the heat stable. The other cloak they threw on the bed they had made of rge ferns. It seemed a reasonable set up, given their ck of supplies. They only needed to survive two weeks. Two weeks, and the ship would come. Two weeks and she could hold her children again.

  Her heart ached, and she put her head on Ael’s shoulder. She wanted to lose herself in her wife, to forget, forget the separation, forget that they were being used as pawns by her people, forget that they had a dragon egg to keep safe. She wanted to feel something, anything other than the crushing despair. She slipped her hand into Ael’s, seeking comfort and warmth. At least this she could have. Ael kissed her goodnight, her kiss soft and chaste. Nereida returned the quick peck with one of her own, and closed her eyes to block the tears. If she slept, she wouldn’t feel.